• Choosing your aquarium fish tank

In general, the larger the tank, the better your chances of success. There are many reasons for this.

First, the most dangerous threat to fish survival is the waste that the fish themselves produce. This consists of solid waste and ammonia along with other organic chemicals. The really bad part is the ammonia. If you put a fish in a small container and feed it, it will quickly produce enough ammonia to poison itself. If you put the same fish in a large container, the ammonia it produces will be diluted in the larger volume of water. If the ammonia is sufficiently diluted, it is essentially non-toxic to the fish. This is not a permanent solution, but a large tank will give you more room for error than a small tank.

Another reason that a large tank is more likely to be successful is related to fish behavior. Many kinds of fish are accustomed to having a certain territory or space that they occupy and other fishes do not. Kind of like personal space. Under certain conditions, a fish that feels crowded may even kill other fish that it feels are too close. In addition to the territory issue, most fishes will eat other fishes given the chance. So a large aquarium will help reduce the chances that your fishes will kill or eat one another.

There's another phenomenon that comes into play with tank size selection. It's called bare tank syndrome. Few fish keepers are immune to it. Here's how it happens - "Wow, my new fish are really cool! But I hardly have any fish in this tank at all! Hey, those other fish are really cool too! I want some of those! I want my tank to be full of fish, right now!" So the tendency is for the fish keeper to quickly fill the tank with lots of fishes. Reference the above paragraphs on ammonia and territory. A larger tank will safely hold a lot more fish than a smaller tank.

So what's the final analysis? Get as large a tank as you can afford and have room for.